A Notre Dame teammate of Manti Te’o says the players were suspicious about Te’o’s girlfriend and described the Heisman Trophy candidate as a “very good” actor.

Te’o said in a press release Wednesday that he is the victim of an online hoax and that he fell in love with a woman he believed to be Lennay Kekua. An explosive Deadspin report says that Kekua doesn’t exist, was not Te’o’s girlfriend and didn’t die of leukemia as Te’o painfully told reporters throughout the 2012 season.

Manti Te'o's teammates were suspicious of this alleged girlfriend, but never approached him about it, one unnamed player told PepperOnSports.com. (AP Photo)

Rather, Deadspin writes, she was the online creation of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a friend or acquaintance of Te’o. Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick says the alleged hoax, which the university hired a private company to investigate, involved numerous characters, including a woman pretending to be someone named Lennay Kekua. Te’o said he talked to her nightly and that he “met” her after a game at Stanford in 2009.

When she “died” in September of 2012, just days after his grandmother died, Te’o appeared devastated.